ISLAMABAD: Foreign Office spokesperson Qazi Khalil said on Thursday that claims made by American journalist Seymour Hersh are baseless and that Pakistan is committed to eliminating terrorism.
Hersh had claimed in an article written in London Review of Books that Pakistan had helped the United States get to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad.
“We strongly reject the claim made by Hersh in his report,” the spokesperson said.
US forces killed Osama bin Laden with the full cooperation of Pakistani military and intelligence agencies, who had kept the 9/11 mastermind prisoner inside his infamous Abbottabad compound for years before the fatal raid, veteran investigative journalist Hersh alleged.
According to the 10,000-word expose, Bin Laden was a prisoner of the Pakistan military, who not only knew of his location, but were keeping him under house arrest and accepting funds from Saudi Arabia for his upkeep.
“Accusations made by US journalist Seymour Hersh about Pakistan are totally baseless,” Khalil said.
Two former senior Pakistani military officials told AFP that a defector from an intelligence assisted the US in its hunt for Osama bin Laden, but denied the two countries had officially worked together.
The White House flatly rejected claims that Pakistan was told in advance about a 2011 special operations raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
“This was a US operation through and through,” said Edward Price, a White House National Security Council spokesman.
“The notion that the operation” which killed the 9/11 mastermind, “was anything but a unilateral US mission is patently false,” he said.
